Afternoon News Sweep for KABC : Television: With ‘Oprah’ as the lead-in, Channel 7 wins easily, but KNBC news tops morning and late-night periods. NBC leads a tight overall sweeps race.

Again using newsroom bloopers and the dominant ratings coattails of Oprah Winfrey, KABC Channel 7 easily won all three afternoon news time periods over former champ KNBC Channel 4 during November, according to figures released Wednesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co.

KNBC fared a bit better in the ratings compiled by the rival Arbitron firm, winning the 6 p.m. news battle and finishing a close second to KABC at 4 and 5 p.m. And KNBC continued to dominate both the late news and early-morning news competition in both ratings services, while KCBS Channel 2 trailed in all news time periods.

The Nielsen averages reported Wednesday did not include the last night of the November sweeps, one of four annual ratings periods that help determine advertising rates at the local stations, but numbers for that night were considered unlikely to affect the final standings.

Nationally, in one of the closest three-way races ever, NBC was almost certain to win an unprecedented seventh consecutive November sweeps. Through Tuesday night, NBC was leading with a 13.2 rating, compared to CBS’ 13 and ABC’s 12.6. (Each point represents 921,000 households nationwide.) Final Arbitron numbers for the month showed NBC winning by .3 over CBS and .6 over ABC.

Thanks to blockbuster ratings for the seven-game World Series in October, CBS still leads the season standings by a full point over NBC and 1.6 points over ABC. But while NBC claimed its 18th sweeps win out of the last 20, ABC projected that it would win in the area that many advertisers consider most important: viewers in the age groups of 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54.

The three major networks’ combined share of audience, which has been declining appreciably over the past few years, declined one point from a year ago to 62%.

Fox, meanwhile, finished the November sweeps with a 7.9 rating for its four nights of prime-time programming, up 30% over the previous year. And cable TV viewership was about 10% higher than a year ago.

In the local ratings, “Jeopardy!” at 7:30 p.m. on KCBS Channel 2 again finished as the top-rated program outside of prime time, averaging an audience of more than 565,000 households a night--a 13% increase over its score a year ago.

KNBC’s “Hard Copy” finished second in the 7:30 time period, followed by “Full House” on KTLA Channel 5, “A Current Affair” on KTTV Channel 11, KABC’s new version of “Candid Camera,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation” on KCOP Channel 13 and “Golden Girls” on KCAL Channel 9.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” provided a huge lead-in to KABC’s afternoon newscasts. It was seen in an average of more than 410,000 homes each afternoon at 3 p.m., more than double the audience of “Donahue” on Channel 4 at that hour and more than triple that of the new “Maury Povich Show” on Channel 2.

“Sally Jesse Raphael,” airing at 2 p.m. on KCAL Channel 9, talked her way into nearly 300,000 homes each afternoon, according to Nielsen, more than three times the numbers posted by KNBC’s new talk entry, “Jenny Jones.”

At 4 p.m. on KCBS, “Geraldo” posted about a 25,000-household gain over last year, while the “Montel Williams Show” on KCOP Channel 13 trailed “Geraldo” but boosted the station’s fortunes some 50,000 homes over last November’s “Family Feud.”

Reruns of “Hunter” on KTLA Channel 5 showed no mercy again this sweeps, easily winning the 6 p.m. dinner hour in both ratings services over three local newscasts, the three national newscasts and such high-profile sitcom reruns as “The Cosby Show” and “The Golden Girls.”

KTTV Channel 11 also celebrated the allure of its sexy dating show “Studs” at 6:30 p.m. and its often raunchy sitcom “Married . . . With Children” at 7 p.m. Though it trailed “Hunter,” “Studs” was seen in an average of 315,000 households a day, tying “World News Tonight” on KABC and beating both “NBC Nightly News” and “CBS Evening News.” “Studs” improved the station’s ratings in the time period about 60% over what KTTV was earning with reruns of “Family Ties” last May.

Reruns of “Married . . . With Children,” meanwhile, won outright the lucrative 7 p.m. time period over such syndicated powerhouses as “Wheel of Fortune,” “Inside Edition,” “Entertainment Tonight” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Reruns of the offbeat sitcom grabbed viewers in nearly 500,000 households each weeknight, more than double the audience KTTV mustered last November with reruns of “MASH.”

KCAL’s good news came from the fact that its 20-month-old prime-time newscast jumped 15% in Nielsen and 20% in Arbitron over what the three-hour news block had earned the past few sweeps. In the head-to-head independent news competition at 10 p.m., however, KCAL finished last, trailing longtime champ KTLA by more than 125,000 households but second-place KTTV and third-running KCOP by just a few thousand homes.

While KTLA relished its 10 p.m. news victory, the two-hour morning news block that it premiered last summer drew about the same number of households as the station had attracted last November with such oldies as “The Brady Bunch” and “Punky Brewster.” “The KTLA Morning News” grabbed just over 90,000 homes each morning, well behind “Today” on KNBC and “Good Morning America” on KABC, but still a tick better than “This Morning” on KCBS.

In other sweeps highs and lows, using Nielsen numbers:

* Lunch news: KCBS scored a clear victory over KCAL with its noontime news, but both newscasts finished far behind the soap operas “All My Children” on KABC and “Days of Our Lives” on KNBC. KCAL’s newscast also lagged behind “The Joan Rivers Show” on KTLA.

* Anything but Bedtime News: “The Tonight Show” again topped all late-night talk shows locally with a 5.5 rating and 21% share of the audience. “The Arsenio Hall Show” earned a 3.8 and 11 share at 11 p.m., while “Late Night with David Letterman” got a 3.2 and an 18 share in the 12:30 a.m. hour. “Cheers” on KTLA at 11 p.m. was the most watched late-night entertainment show with a 5.9 and 15 share, easily beating KCBS’ late news, “Arsenio” and a KTTV repeat of “Studs.” “Nightline,” meanwhile, got a 4.5 mark and a 15 share on KABC at 11:30 p.m.

* New Talk News: “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee” isn’t new, but it was new last month to KABC, where, without the competition of KABC’s now canceled “A.M. Los Angeles,” it more than doubled the audience it drew last year on KCAL. Nonetheless, it finished behind reruns of “Donahue” on KNBC. The recently canned “Chuck Woolery Show” fared decently at 1 p.m. on KCAL, beating everything in the time period except KABC’s “One Live to Live.” KCAL’s “Christina and Friends” had no such luck, finishing behind soap operas, “Home” and reruns of “Little House on the Prairie.”